LOS ANGELES — Faced with a moment of truth after being shut out in back-to-back games by the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Chicago Cubs had all eyes upon them, studying how they would react.

Manager Joe Maddon professed faith in his players, promising that he would not be visiting Negative Town anytime soon.

Instead, he wanted the Cubs to forget their circumstance and stop looking for panaceas. Maddon wanted his players to think small.

And so Ben Zobrist did when he came to the plate after the Cubs had added three more hitless innings to their growing frustration. On the first pitch he saw to begin the fourth, Zobrist dropped a bunt down the third-base line and raced to first without a throw.

That act of simplicity, after so many mighty swings and misses, turned out to be the start of something big. Another hit followed and then another, and soon there were Anthony Rizzo and Addison Russell — the most maligned hitters in the lineup — blasting home runs, sending the Cubs to a 10-2 victory on Wednesday night and leveling the National League Championship Series at two games apiece.

It was an emphatic win for the Cubs, who ensured that the series would return to Wrigley Field this weekend. Their ace, Jon Lester, will try to give them a lead to take home when he faces Kenta Maeda on Thursday night, with the Dodgers saying they will save Clayton Kershaw for Game 6 on Saturday.

“Sometimes when you don’t get things going your direction and you feel like you’re putting decent at-bats together or you’re just missing balls, that can get frustrating,” Zobrist said. “It can lead you down a path that you don’t want your confidence to go.”

The Cubs, who entered Wednesday night hitting .185 during the playoffs, had a breakout performance. Rizzo and Russell, who had a combined three hits in 50 playoff at-bats, picked up six hits alone on Wednesday and combined to drive in five runs — their first of the playoffs. Rizzo’s three hits came after he began the night with two strikes — and after he switched to teammate Matt Szczur’s bat.

“Same size, just a different model and different name,” Rizzo said. “And it worked.”

It was the Dodgers — whose aggressiveness throughout the series had put the Cubs on their heels — who came unhinged in a variety of ways. Justin Turner was picked off second. Second baseman Chase Utley hastily tried to bare-hand a toss from shortstop Corey Seager and dropped it. And left fielder Andrew Toles, with a chance to throw out Zobrist at the plate, let loose with a wild throw that sailed past catcher Yasmani Grandal.

Two runs scored later on Javier Baez’s sacrifice fly when Grandal couldn’t corral a throw from center fielder Joc Pederson.

In all, the Dodgers committed four errors.

They also looked to have been deprived of taking an early lead when a replay review failed to overturn Adrian Gonzalez being thrown out at the plate to end the second inning on an extremely close play. “I was a little nervous,” said Cubs catcher Willson Contreras.

The Dodgers’ unraveling began in an innocent manner. The Cubs got three runners aboard in the first three innings against Julio Urias, the 20-year-old left-hander from Culiacán, Mexico. But they could not muster a hit, and their struggles at the plate were becoming the dominant story line of this series.

Maddon said after the 6-0 loss Tuesday that the challenge facing his players was more mental than physical. Before the game he expounded.

“I want them to stay in the moment,” he said. “I want you to continue to work the at-bats, pitch by pitch, things to that nature — stuff you can control.”

He added: “Believe me, even major league players can mess your head up if you come at them in different directions right now at this time of the year. They don’t need that, so we’re going tried and true. Score first. Win the inning. One pitch at a time. All the psychobabble that I really believe is true.”

Nobody with the Cubs understands Maddon’s messages and manners more than Zobrist, who played under him for nine seasons with the Tampa Bay Rays. So, even though he was hitting cleanup, Zobrist thought nothing of dropping down a bunt that third baseman Justin Turner could not make a play on.

“After we hadn’t gotten any hits, I thought it’s time,” Zobrist said. “Somebody needs to do it. So I figured it was the time to try to lay one down.”

Up next were two of the Cubs’ few hot hitters: Baez and Contreras. Baez stayed back on a two-strike curveball and laced it to left field. Contreras, in a 0-2 hole, followed with another single to shallow left field. Although Toles gathered the ball as Zobrist was reaching third, the third-base coach Gary Jones waved him home.

The aggressiveness paid off when Toles’s throw sailed wide of the plate, snapping a 21-inning scoreless streak and giving the large contingent of Cubs fans down the right-field line something to cheer about. Jason Heyward took another small bite, pulling a two-strike pitch to the right side to score Baez and earn Heyward hugs and hand slaps in the dugout.

“It’s the baseball gods,” catcher Miguel Montero said. “You’ve got to play the game the right way. You just can’t wait for the long ball the whole time. You’ve got to do the small things to win a game, especially when you’re not swinging the bat good, and we weren’t swinging the bat good.”

Russell made the score 4-0 when he drove a 2-0 pitch from Urias over the center-field wall. Rizzo led off the next inning by hitting a 3-2 pitch from reliever Pedro Baez over the center-field wall — yet another delivery on a two-strike pitch. That built the Cubs’ lead to 5-0.

The Cubs did encounter one anxious moment. Reliever Mike Montgomery, with a chance to escape a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the fifth, had Turner’s comebacker tick off his glove for a two-run single. But Montgomery retired Gonzalez and pinch-hitter Kike Hernandez on groundouts, and the Cubs’ lead remained 5-2.

The game did not remain tight for long. The Cubs continued to bleed the Dodgers. In the sixth, two infield singles, a walk, a hit by Montgomery, two more singles, a sacrifice fly and an error ballooned the Chicago lead to 10-2.

The Cubs were playing loose and free, leaving the ballpark with their confidence restored, all of it beginning with the smallest of hits.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B15 of the New York edition with the headline: Beginning With Bunt, Cubs Offense Awakens and Evens Things Up. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe